


Skimming the Surface

by raffinit



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Coping, Established Relationship, F/M, Furiosa and Max are foster parents/adoptive parents, Furiosa was a social worker overseeing the case of Colonel Joe Moore, Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Max was the cop working the case, Modern AU, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5874001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raffinit/pseuds/raffinit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking on a case was one thing. Committing themselves to a handful of children under the age of 16 was another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Quick explanation: Furiosa lobbied violently to be allowed to adopt the girls after being the assigned social worker on their case. Ex-military guy adopted them out of the system and "groomed" them into one day becoming brides of the apocalypse. Angharad is fourteen. And the eldest. Cheedo is six. And the youngest. There was mentions of past childhood abuse and rape/sexual abuse, so here is a blaring warning for that.

\---

Mornings in their household are hectic ones. There’s no way around it - by six in the ass-crack of dawn, there will be screaming children and food that needs cooking, coffee brewing, and baths running. It starts the same, almost every day. Dawn, and there will be weepy sniffling moans from the other room, and through their tangle of limbs, Furiosa and Max will have to pry themselves away from each other. 

He grumbles into her neck, his breath puffing warm on her skin, arms heavy over her frame, and Furiosa rolls them both over to clamber over his stocky limbs to get to the youngest before the screaming gets any more intense. She takes a moment to remember that walking around naked in front of their foster children is severely frowned upon, and Max cracks an eye open to peer unabashed at the silhouette of Furiosa’s ass in the light as she bends over. 

“You need to get the girls up for school,” she tells him, barely conscious herself, and Max rolls upright. He grabs for his brace, her arm, and together they cobble each other together just as their bedroom door bursts open. 

Their ten year old stands in an impressive imitation of Furiosa’s akimbo I-Am-Not-Fucking-Around pose, although the image is decidedly not as intimidating in sleep shorts and a hockey jersey down to her knees. Or when the poser is only a little over four feet tall and weighs sixty pounds soaking wet. 

“Cheedo won’t stop  _ screaming _ ,” Toast yells, and Max gives her a heavy-handed pat on the head as Furiosa rushes down the hallway to the source of the wailing. He doesn’t say anything about her own raised voice that cuts into the shells of his ears; it’s too early to be awake, and she’s allowed to be irate. 

Max grunts and urges her down the stairs. “Breakfast,” he tells her, and Toast shakes her bed-head out against his hand. He uses her like a guide, shuffling along amiably into the kitchen. The space is filled with dishes in the sink, and toys and a random array of sports equipment that he gives Toast a look for. 

She shrugs. “I’ll clean up later.”

By sunrise, the kitchen is full of girls and coffee and plates of breakfast passed around the island counter full of French toast and bacon and an assortment of fruits. Angharad bypasses the bacon, as always, and nibbles delicately on the end of a small slice of French toast that she splits with Capable, and peels herself an orange. 

Max buries his face into a cup of coffee for as long as he can; keeps one hand out to keep Dag from snatching Toast’s glass of juice and holds out his foot to keep Dog from lapping up the chocolate sauce dribbled on the ground at the hands of Cheedo. 

“Da!” Cheedo flails from Furiosa’s hip, arms outstretched for him, and Max slips himself close enough for the exchange, and once settled he rested his cheek against the top of Cheedo’s head. Her small fingers curl into the collar of his shirt, and she giggles at Dag when the blonde girl makes a face at her. 

By seven thirty, the bus honks from outside; they hear the holler from Valkyrie. 

“Today’s practice,” Capable says, shouldering her bag. “We’ll be late today, around three or four.”

Furiosa nods, only just finding the time to pour herself a first cup of coffee. She takes a moment to take half of the mug down before she looks at the girls. “We’ll pick you up,” she tells them, and at the door she kisses Angharad, Capable, and Dag goodbye before waving hello to Val, and as Toast runs by she hitches the fingers of her prosthetic into the handle of her bag.

“Mom,” Toast whines, but Furiosa shakes her head at her indulgently.

“You have a good day, okay?” she says, looking at the girl. “Stay out of trouble for me?”

The girl presses her lips together before sighing. “Yeah, okay,” she mumbles, and stalls enough to kiss Furiosa on the cheek and wave at Max before bolting down the lawn. 

Furiosa folds her arms, sighing as she watches the bus pull off, smiling when Val honks once and all of the girls appear through the windows. 

Max appears beside her, and Cheedo is verging tears in his arms. Furiosa frowns and reaches for her, pausing at the look on his face. He clears his throat, jerking his head slightly as he transfers the girl to her arms. “She um. Wanted to kiss again. On the mouth.”

A cold, wrenching hate boils under her skin, but Furiosa nods once and holds Cheedo close, petting her hair gently. “Cheedo, honey, remember what we said?” she prompts softly. “About kissing Dad-Max on the lips? And touching him without his permission?”

Cheedo sniffles, and says nothing as she breaks into a wailing sob.

They sigh, a singular sound amidst the screaming, and Furiosa takes Cheedo back into the house.

 


	2. Antics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone at school is afraid of Furiosa

It wasn’t as if he’d outright  _ told  _ her to do it. He hadn’t held a gun to her head or kicked down the bedroom door and demanded it of her amidst growling words and throttling hands. He hadn’t whispered in her ear and grinned, or slipped a note into her hands and ambled away whistling. 

To be fair, he didn’t  _ stop  _ her, either. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Furiosa snarls. At her side, Max shifts on his feet, glancing up from where he’d been fiddling with the last of the screws for his brace. He makes a curious sound, and she thrusts her phone into his face.

He squints at the small thesis-length text and arches his eyebrow at the sender’s name. “Hmm.”

Furiosa scowls, and as she heaves herself off the couch she does so with a flurry of expletives. It’s been hard; there’s no denying that - five girls under the age of sixteen, two under ten, but they’ve always managed to scrape by somehow. The girls had come to her after Max’s old partner in the force had asked for a favor - a temporary situation, at first, to house these young girls they’d taken from a mad man festering in his own convoluted cult. 

Two weeks with two girls became two months with four, and so it goes from there. 

“I thought she’d gotten over that phase by now,” Furiosa sighs. They’re on the way to the school now, Max behind the wheel because he didn’t think he trusted her to keep her temper in check through mid-day traffic. She leans her prosthetic arm against the window and weaves its fingers through her shorn hair, and the way she stares unseeingly out onto the streets makes Max rumble again in his throat.  

“Can’t blame her,” he says soothingly; hits the indicator on their ancient but thunderous SUV to make the turn. “‘s been hard.”

Tatiana - or Toast, as she prefers to be called - had come to them around the same time the youngest two. There was Angharad and Catherine, and then Dahlia and Tatiana, and then finally a toddler barely old enough to be considered a child.

Her name is Charlotte.

Max calls her Cheedo; there’s a long story about hair and sticky cheesy fingers and non-Furiosa-approved war paint. 

All the girls have nicknames; Rebirth Names, as the ancient neighbor they call Miss Giddy says. Names that give rebirth to broken souls. 

So now they are Angharad, Capable, Toast, Dag, and Cheedo.

(There is a rumor that Angharad had once been called Splendid. They do not address this, ever.)

So today they’re headed to the school. It will be the third time this week, and as they enter the bustling hallway of pint-sized humans squealing and yammering among themselves, Max keeps a wide berth. Furiosa marches through them indifferently, but that is just the power Furiosa has over things. 

She moves. The mountain parts. 

Cheedo rides on his hip; it’s too dangerous with a horde of children around for her to ride on his shoulders, and Cheedo is perfectly fine with glueing herself to his side and glaring at anyone lucid enough to give them a double-take.

“Miss Jo-Bassa,” the secretary says as soon as they’re within sight. “The principal is waiting.” The disdain is clear, but more so the fear as Furiosa glowers at her dangerously and the metal of her prosthetic gleams in the garish light of the office. 

Max growls at her as he passes. 

They find Toast sitting petulantly in a plastic chair, slumped into it with a bitterness in her eyes as she looks from the principal to Furiosa. Her face shifts at the sight of the woman, and she sits up straighter. “Furi-Mom -”

“You’re not suspending her from school.” It’s the tone of voice he’s heard her use with the troublesome boys; the ones who paint themselves white and hoot and holler about suicidal acrobatics off tall buildings.  _ Parkour _ , they call it. Max calls it idiocy. 

The principal steeples his fingers and sighs. “Miss Jo-Bassa, she has been called into my office three times this week. Tatiana -”

“My name is Toast!” the girl shouts, and Max clears his throat just quietly enough for her to hear him. Toast looks at him and sinks back into her seat with her arms folded. 

He fishes out the keys from his pocket. “You can wait in the car,” he offers, but Toast shakes her head stubbornly. Cheedo leans down and takes the keys in her hand to jab at the buttons. 

“What happened?” Furiosa asks, and despite the principal’s gesture towards the chairs in front of his desk, she remains a towering figure over him. Max tries his best to puff up enough to bolster this image. 

“Well,” the principal says. “Tat -  _ Toast  _ has broken yet another student’s nose.” 

Toast scowls at him with all the vitriol a ten year old can muster. “He deserved it,” she insists. “He was saying things about us! I told him to shut up and he didn’t, and he spat at me so I punched him.”

Furiosa’s brow twitches. “We’ve talked about doing this to your classmates.”

“But Dad-Max said I could!” Toast says, and Max’s eyes go wide. 

Oh. 

Right.

Furiosa turns to him, slowly. Actually she barely twists herself at the waist to glance down at him over her nose, and Max does a fairly good impression of an ignorant bystander. He clears his throat again and looks from the principal to Furiosa. “What?”

“Did you say that?” she asks him, the incredulity layered and quiet in her voice.

Max shrugs his shoulders sheepishly. “Not - in words.” He bobs his head uncomfortably, and aches to rub at the back of his neck. He tugs at the tendrils of his bracelet instead. “Said - that you protect. Family,” he supplies. “That...hmm...family’s something worth. Hurting for.”

There’s a beat, and Max wonders idly if this will be the part where Furiosa breaks his nose again. He didn’t mind it the first time; it was a nice, bonding moment between them, but now - well, he wouldn’t say he didn’t deserve it. 

“Wait in the car.”

He blinks. There’s a guardedness to her face now; he likes to pride himself with knowing how to read the maps of Furiosa’s face, the tic of her lip, the flicker of her eyes, but today he seems to be off-kilter. 

He grunts, nodding obediently. Holds out a hand for Toast to take, out of habit. Cheedo sucks on her thumb idly, wriggling down to walk because if the big girls walk, she walks too. Being a big girl keeps her grounded into the present, and not in a time when she had laps to straddle and touches to give. 

The ten year old slips out of the chair and takes his hand eagerly. They say nothing until they reach the car. “Is Furi-Mom mad?” Toast asks nervously. For however much she fights them and rolls her eyes at the things they might do, she needs them. Wants them to look at her and think that she would be someone to be proud of. 

Max shakes his head. “No,” he says, with certainty. She’s not mad. He knows when Furiosa is mad; this is not madness. Or rather - it’s not anger. “She’s just mad we had to stop cuddling on the couch.”

Toast makes a face. “Oh ew, Dad!”

Max grins. “There was feet rubbing.”

“Stop,” Toast groans, flopping back onto the beaten leather of the backseat. “Ugh, grown-ups are so gross.”

“We kissed lots.”

“ _ Dad _ !”

He chuckles quietly, and they linger together in an amiable silence until he can’t help himself. Toast fiddles with the strings of her hoodie and stares out the window at the school, watching the doors. He presses his lips together and follows suit. 

“You hit him hard?”

“Not hard enough,” she grumbles. “He deserved more, that smeg.”

Max bobs his head. “Mm. You hurt?”

Toast peers at her knuckles thoughtfully. “No, not really,” she says, flexing them. “Just a little sore, I guess.”

“Mm. He say?”

Toast goes quiet, and Max keeps his gaze in the general direction of the school, but from the corner of his eye, he can see her staring at the beds of her fingernails. A festering worry grows in his stomach; it’s always there when it comes to the girls, but it swells in his stomach like indigestion. 

He wants to probe, but instead he sits, silent.

Eventually Toast mumbles, “he said that you and Furi-Mom only wanted all of us because you get the money. And if it were him - he’d have taken us all too, like Joe did.”

Max’s fist clenches. He tries to tell himself to unclench his jaw and to speak with something more than a vicious growl. “‘s his name?”

“Salvador,” she says distastefully. “His friends call him Slit, because he got these scars from eating so many Otter Pops.”

Max’s lip curls. He wonders if there’s a way he can terrify a ten year old without being arrested. Probably could, he thinks. He has the right sources. “He’s lying,” he says gruffly, and he looks at Toast for a brief, but speaking moment. “We. Mm. Want you. All of you.”

“I know,” she says eventually, almost shyly. “Still - did I get you in trouble with Furi-Mom?”

He tilts his head here and there. “We’ll see.” Furiosa bursts through the doors of the school, and they share a look. 

“‘n I sleep in your room?” he mumbles, and Toast nods sagely as Furiosa yanks the passenger side open. 

She points at Toast. “You. Grounded.” Toast huffs indignantly, but makes no protest. Furiosa points her metal fingers at Max then, eyes blazing as she jabs him hard in the chest. 

“You.” She narrows her eyes at him. “Fool.”

He nods placatingly and lets her punch him hard in the shoulder before putting the car into gear. At night, he lets her rant and grumble about his idiotic cuteness and  _ sweetness _ and holy V8 she wants to punch him in the mouth because how dare he say things like that to their kids and expect her to keep her Fury Mother mask on.


	3. history

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we delve briefly into how they meet

\------

She has the tendency of braiding hair too tightly. It comes from the years of braiding leather and horsehair - the tighter it is, the stronger. She was always the best at it; Val had never quite gotten the grasp of it, and so she was always the one to braid the leather down into reins and whips and anything the Mothers needed..

Unfortunately, hair braiding on young children is an entirely different experience.

So he does it for her.

He has surprisingly delicate hands, for how large and calloused they feel when she slips her flesh hand into one and squeezes. His touch is always gentle, his fingers threading like seamless prongs separating thick hair into sections to pull into pretty little braids. 

“Da,” Cheedo crawls to him and nestles into his lap contentedly. She’s old enough to walk, certainly, and in fact old enough to do many things, but Cheedo had come to them nearly monosyllabic and clinging tightly to Dag. Her records tell them she’s six years old, but her evaluations had told them that her development was only borderlining four.

Joe seemed to like his girls young and sweet.

By three there is a late lunch waiting for the older girls; Max is the cook of their household,  because Furiosa might have survived as an independent woman, but making anything beyond mac and cheese or a killer chicken parm - they’d rather not risk the hospital visit.

“Da, can you tell a story?” Cheedo asks; Furiosa has gone to meet the older girls at the school, so Max takes Cheedo and Toast out into the backyard to sway together on their giant hammock. She is nestled contentedly on his chest, and Toast lies across from him, her feet tucked under his armpits. 

Max hums. The heat is seeping into his bones and the swaying reminds him exactly why he’d convinced Furiosa to get the hammock. “Wh’s story, mm?”

“Any,” Cheedo says, and Max dozes idly for a moment.

\----

He remembers getting the call. Not that it was anything out of the ordinary for them - unfortunately. It still scares him sometimes at the level of indifference he has learned to adapt for each new case that comes across his desk. He doesn’t get called out to these kinds of cases very often; his history is known in the force, and he’s not usually sent for unless there is a need for brute strength and an imposing bear-like figure. 

It’s why he likes riding the desk as a detective - he has men to send out, uniforms to keep things in check.

And then he gets the call.

“I’ll take it.” It’s an immediate mumble of words from him, more words they get out of him on a good day. It’s one forty-two in the morning, and all he knows is that there was a domestic violence complaint from a neighbor, and there had been some kind of altercation between a man and a woman. 

There had been children caught in the middle somewhere. 

When he arrived at the scene, the first thing he noticed was the fact that the hulking, brutish mass of the so-called ex-military Colonel was hunched over his knees on the porch, nursing what seemed to be a profusely bleeding broken nose and jaw. Amidst the flashing blue and red, Max shuffles under the tape and over to where the EMT have set up another truck, for the children. 

He blinks at the sight of the woman wrapped in a grey blanket. 

“Detective?”

He turns to the responding officer, grunts a greeting before glancing expectantly at the notepad in his hand. “Conditions?”

The officer skims the page. “Well, Colonel Moore’s definitely gonna need a stop at the hospital. Says he and Miss Jo-Bassa had a ‘disagreement’ about his rights as a foster parent.” Max presses his lips together and looks at the bundle of girls pressed together; the eldest doesn’t look old enough to be considered a teen. “Says he doesn’t want to press charges, but we’ll still have to remand Miss Jo-Bassa and Colonel Moore before we decide if there really needs to be charges.”

Max frowns. “She trespass?”

“Nope. Moore says she came over, as per her usual routine.”

His eyebrow pulls lower over his forehead. “Mm?”

The officer shrugs sheepishly. “She’s their social worker, apparently. Comes by every month to make sure the girls are doing okay.”

“So he attacked her,” Max says flatly. “Remand him. Assault.”

“But - she didn’t press charges -”

His words cut like the growl of a bear. “You talk to her?” 

The officer stares at him, throat bobbing. “No -”

Max gives him a withering look before brushing past the man to where the woman sits amidst the young girls. Even from a distance, he knows she’s wiping tears and speaking, though he cannot hear her. He clears his throat at a fair distance away, waits until his presence is known to all of them, including the littlest one. “Everyone alright?” His eyes flit from girl to girl, before they settle steadily on the woman. It strikes him as - not odd, really, but surprising that even with a bloody lip and swelling bruise on her cheek, this woman’s eyes are unmoving and defiant on his face. 

“Joe hit her,” the eldest one says; a fair-haired girl with a pretty face lined with white lines on one side. In her eyes he sees the same resolution and strength. “She was trying to help us and he hit her first.”

“He should be put down,” the white-blonde hisses; she spits at him almost like a cat, bares her gap teeth at him as he shuffles in place. “Gun him down, shoot him - beat him up with your little stick!”

Max looks at the woman. “You alright?” he murmurs. “‘m looking to press charges.”

“Furiosa didn’t do anything wrong!” the white-blonde shouts. He arches a brow at the name.  _ Fury-osa. Furiousa. Fury.  _ It seems like a fitting name for the fire in her eyes. 

“I don’t think he means me, Dahlia,” Furiosa murmurs, and Max watches as she shifts her arms out of the blanket - his eyebrows arch, but he takes the sight of her prosthetic arm in stride. It’s a lot more rustic than the modern, flesh-like attachments; there is more metal and grease and crude but dangerous-looking pincers alongside the sleek chainmail fingers. 

The redhead sitting pressed to the eldest stares at him calmly. “You want to take us away from Joe.”

Max’s mouth curves. “Trying to. He’s. Mm. Got records. A bad one.”

Furiosa scowls, her flesh hand wrapped tight around the youngest girl; he knows none of them are related, not at all - he read the files. He knows how Joe got them. It’s a wonder sometimes, the corruption of the system founded to protect these children. All it takes is a medal and Joe had been looked at like a god in the eyes of the system. 

“Press the charges,” she orders him, and somewhere in the crevices of his mind, Max doesn’t think he has a problem with taking orders from this woman. “If that’s what keeps him from the girls, then do it. I’ll tear his face open in court with what I’ve got on him.”

Max nods. “Mm. Well -” he gestures to them all. “They’ll need a place. Stay safe. You need to come with me. To the station.”

“Not without them.” Her eyes are hard on his, daring him to deny her this; Max swallows a sigh and dips his chin down to his chest in a nod before offering a hand. He tilts it upwards to show the wary girls his empty palm, the absence of a holster on his hip. Max doesn’t carry a gun. He rarely needs one. 

The girls shuffle together, pressed as tightly as possible to one another. The younger ones tuck themselves into Furiosa, for support and to support, and Max offers his coat to her. A quick look for approval has him draping the battered leather over her shoulders, and he squeezes the strong curve of her arms gently. 

“What’s your name?” She lets her fingers press against his skin, a thanks, and Max shrugs, helps them into the car. 

“Just call me Max.”


	4. words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> max does a thing

\----

“So.”

She looks at him calmly. In the light of the interrogation room at the station, she is certainly a statuesque woman; aside from her height, he feels almost humbled in her presence, the calm and assertive way she looks at him. He’s not quite used to it. In front of her he’s set a cup of coffee, and a bottle of water. 

“You tell me what happened?” he asks. The girls had been persuaded to wait outside with another tending officer, and had only left them when Furiosa had promised to break the officer’s arms in three places if he took them any further than the waiting room. Max had thought idly to himself that he ought to warn her against threatening bodily harm at his men, but the look of terror in the rookie’s eyes were enough to stay his words. 

So they sit together, across the desk and some coffee between them. 

Furiosa rolls her neck slightly. “I showed up, he threatened to throw me off his property. When I didn’t back down, he threw a punch.” 

He gives her a look.

She sighs. “A couple punches. Then I hit him back.” Her mouth twists wryly. “Guess he forgot about the arm.” The prosthetic flexes, and Max nods. Reinforced steel and iron, it looks like. He wonders how she bears the weight of it, but he knows simply from the way her shoulders and arms move; sinew and muscle. 

“Mm. Not the first time then.” 

Furiosa hums. “Man like that - he’s been through fifteen other social workers.”

He frowns. “Bit much.”

A dry smile pulls at her lips, and her eyes settle on his face with a cool, distant gleam. “You know how many girls he’s taken from us? Twenty seven, since he discharged from the military. Takes three, four of them at a time; scares off anyone curious enough to poke around, and if they don’t “fit” his little harem criteria, he sends them back. Maybe.” 

“Maybe?”

Furiosa looks away. “We were lucky enough to get four of them back. The others -” she shakes her head, and when she looks at Max again he isn’t quite sure what he sees in her eyes. Guilt, shame, anger, fear. Something between those four. “I’m pressing charges. In the meantime, the girls will stay with me. I’ll take them somewhere safe.”

Max nods, shuffles out of his seat. He pulls the door open for her, and makes a small, grunting sound as she passes, enough for her to glance at him. “You uh. Need to sign papers. Legal things. Um.” He jerks his head to the room next door. “I can. Sit. With them.”

She stares at him for a moment, face smooth and eyes distant, and Max wonders if there isn’t something that he can offer - some kind of proof of his credibility, but Furiosa nods then. 

“Dahlia bites,” she tells him. “Watch out for teeth.”

He doesn’t ask which one Dahlia is, but by the time Furiosa is allowed back into the room, she finds Max cross-legged on the floor, holding Dahlia in what looks like a leg headlock as he fastidiously cleans her hair of tangles and knots.

Her eyebrows arch high. “What are you doing?”

“Fork,” Max grunts, plucking a ball of tangled hair from Dahlia’s head carefully. “Dunno where she got it. Came in and she was. Mm.” He holds up the offending item, and the eldest girl takes it from him calmly. 

“She brought it from home,” Angharad tells her. “She wanted to comb her hair - like Ariel.”

“And stab slimy scags in the throat!” Dahlia hisses, but Max grumbles something at her and pins her down like an unruly pup to continue untangling her hair. 

Furiosa feels her mouth twitching, but she won’t let the smile quite form on her lips. She doesn’t ask about the Kleenex bandage wrapped around the last three fingers of his left hand, or the smug look on Dahlia’s face when she asks if he’d be willing to escort them home. 

Max nods, and somehow in the process of helping her carry the dozing youngest two up the driveway of a surprisingly large and sprawling house, he is introduced to the extended family of lesbian non-conformist biker women. Women? Womean? Womyn???

By the end of the night he is strong-armed into staying for tea (and whiskey), and through uncertain mumbling smiles and sharing petrified looks with Furiosa, he learns of the Green Valley school. “Somewhere the girls will be safe,” Furiosa says, eyes warm on the woman they call the Valkyrie’s face. “The older girls will go to school there; when the younger ones start high school, they’ll transfer over too.”

Max hums approvingly. But - “might be hard. Getting custody,” he admits, and Furiosa’s eyes slide from woman to woman before settling on him. His own mug of whiskey-laced Twinings is modestly empty; enough to be polite, but enough to remember that he is, after all, an officer on duty still.

“Single mother, all that.” He waves a hand briefly, gesturing somewhat rudely at something invisible in the air. “Military background helped him, but - women. Mm.” He shakes his head apologetically. “Might take a while.”

Furiosa’s shoulders sag slightly as she sighs. “It’s the best chance we’ve got,” she murmurs, and he watches the metal fingers of her hand curl around the Disney’s princess print of her mug. 

Valkyrie reaches out to squeeze her shoulder gently, and something inside Max lurches possessively. He bites down on the inside of his lip as she leans down companionably, smiling, “could get hitched, y’know. Been offering all these years.”

The Womyn they call Mardhi laughs. “Fat chance, love - they’d shut you down as soon as they get a whiff of Sapphic lovers anywhere near the children.” Max glances bewilderedly at Furiosa, but the woman shakes her head fondly. 

“I think Val prefers just being called a lesbian, Mardhi.”

Valkyrie huffs. “I’m  _ bisexual _ , and they can call me whatever the hell they want, but if they send the girls back to that lecherous swine again, I’m ramming the damn bus into his living room and planting one flat between his eyes.” She makes a point of jabbing herself between the eyes and grinding her finger into the skin. “Quick and clean.”

Max shifts in his seat, clearing his throat though his eyes glint at Val in amusement. “Probably best if you didn’t threaten someone around a cop,” he mutters dryly. 

Val grins. “I’ll take my chances.”

Eventually Furiosa sees him to the door, wrapped in a blanket that he knew from the sight and scent, was precious to her. They walk in an amiable silence along the pathway down to his unmarked nestled around the bend, and Max leans against the boot of the car as Furiosa pauses in her step, staring off at the sound of chirping grasshoppers and cicadas. 

“Thank you,” she murmurs, and though the way her words carry are honest and humbled, her eyes stare hard at the scuffed edges of his shoes. “For everything, y’know. You didn’t - need to do anything more, but you did.” She smiles at him then, almost a flash before it’s gone. “Thanks.”

Max nods, licks the taste of whiskey and tea sweet on his skin still. “Um. You - the girls, and all.” He gestures vaguely between them. “I could - help.” Tentatively he chances a glance at her face, and Furiosa looks at him with a calm mask. “Know people. Can get you records. Keep them together with you. Keep him away.”

Her jaw works slowly, and Max tracks the way the muscle jumps and coils before he realizes that blatantly staring would be considered rude. “Why?”

“Why not?” He shrugs. “‘s my job, keeping men like him away from children.” He gestures behind them to the house. “Those girls.” He hums in his throat, shifts about. “They’re good. With you. Like you. They’re strong. Won’t have a better chance anywhere else.”

She smiles thinly. “We could just run. Go somewhere warm.”

“He’ll hunt you down,” he says grimly. “You took his things.”

Her face slackens with anger. “They are not things.” There’s a spark, coiled tense between them, and Max leans back on the balls of his feet, nodding apologetically, holds his hands open in defense. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Meant him. Thinking about them.”

She stares at him for a long moment, and Max wonders if perhaps he should brace for a solid uppercut to the face, but Furiosa just sighs. “Tomorrow. Come by with what you know. We’ll swap notes.”


	5. past, present

**Past**

He comes around the next morning when the dew is still cold on the grass, and when Furiosa opens the door with a none-too-pleasant look of murder on her face, he offers up a take-away cup of coffee. “Didn’t specify a time,” he says sheepishly. 

Furiosa takes the cup from him wordlessly, eyes somewhat dazed with sleep but still glaring valiantly. The majority of her left eye was swelled shut, a deep angry purple and red, and her cheek and lip both sporting a fair amount of the same.  She steps back and he shuffles back into the seat he had taken the night before, watching Furiosa as she shuts the door and latches its three locks, the way she cradles the warm cup in her hand and shivers vaguely from the residual chill. 

“Didn’t know if you liked cream or sugar,” he says apologetically, but Furiosa shrugs, takes a heavy swallow of coffee as she sits. 

“I take it black,” she tells him, and he nods. 

They share what they know - “got enough old charges buried up to send him away a couple lifetimes,” he grunts, and Furiosa’s jaw works silently, mind whirring. 

“Buried, though,” she says, bitter and angry as she moves from cradling her cup between her hand and half-arm to pulling the casefile Max had placed on the table towards her. “Anything worth pulling back up?  _ Can  _ we even pull them back up? Why were they even buried in the first place? Charges dropped?”

Max takes a moment to process her slew of questions, staring at her for a long breath before he blinks and begins to work through the thoughts in his head. Some charges dropped, yes; willingly or otherwise, he couldn’t say. Other charges went nowhere - insufficient evidence or a sudden incidental disappearance of a casefile or key witness. Or too many witnesses, all calling in at once, claiming to have been there exactly when the crime had happened, at different dates, times, and places. “Precious little you  _ can’t _ do when you’ve got connections,” he mumbles irritably. 

Furiosa sighs, and Max feels a dig in his chest at the way the woman palms her face, the tight crease of her brow when her fingers press too hard to her bruises. He clears his throat quietly, leans forward to rest his weight into his arms on the table. “How’re the girls?”

“Wrung out,” Furiosa breathes, leaning back heavily into her seat as she glances down the hallway. “Charlotte won’t say a word and Dahlia woke up screaming twice.” When she looks back at him, he sees a flicker of something ragged and worn there. 

She motions to his hand slightly, a wry smile tugging her lips. “Sorry about the hand, by the way. Dahlia’s...unique.”

Max shrugs, flexing the hand that now sports a set of fork punctures. “Had worse,” he says, laugh lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “Not the first run in with a fork.” He blinks then, as if suddenly remembering, and begins fumbling through the many pockets of his battered leather jacket. 

He pulls it out a plastic, glittery Disney Princess fork a flourish, and grins at the startled bark of a laugh it brings out of Furiosa. 

\--------

**Present Day**

“Alright,” he says. “Bath time.”

Toast groans, rolling out of the hammock after him as Max ambles up to the house easily, Cheedo half-hanging from his arm as she bunny hops along. 

“Da, I want  _ waffles  _ for dinner!” Cheedo says, nearly falling on her face as she trips over her feet - Max jerks his arm up abruptly, and probably keeps the girl from breaking her nose as she wraps her arms and legs around his arm like a negligibly-sized koala bear. 

Max shakes his head at her indulgently, grunting as Toast takes a running leap onto his back, feeling her bony hands scrabbling and pulling at his shirt to clamber up higher. “These are my good clothes,” he grumbles at her, tugging at the misshapen neckline of his favorite henley. 

“They’re your worst clothes,” Toast retorts, arms wrapped around his neck and knobby knees digging into his sides as he lugs them both easily up onto the back porch, swinging Cheedo into one arm as he pushes the back door open. “Mama Furi always says you dress like a hobo.”

“Hobo Dad,” Cheedo says sagely, snuggling into his arms. 

“So  _ can  _ we have waffles for dinner?” Toast presses, leaning her face down to mash it into the side of Max’s cheek, much to his chagrin. 

He grunts, depositing Cheedo onto the kitchen island counter. The TV buzzes noisily with voices and words and stage laughter; he hears Dag’s loud guffaw followed suit by Valkyrie’s melodic one. “Waffles are dessert.”

“What if we have  _ savory  _ waffles?” Toast persists, tugging on his neckline again to haul herself up onto his back and knocking her chin into the back of his head. “Waffles with bacon and eggs and potatoes -”

“Nooooooo,” Cheedo moans, wriggling on the counter as she pouts up at Max, making grabby hands for him to hold her again. “Nooooooo Da, waffles and  _ ice cream _ ! Ice cream, ice cream and waffles!”

Max shakes his head, sighing as he wrestles Toast down off his back and tries to salvage his mangled shirt before putting Cheedo on the floor too. “We’re having real food,” he tells them patiently, pointedly ignoring their combined moues and whines of disappointment. He pulls the fridge door open and grabs the tray of chicken breast and steak Furiosa had marinated that morning, and grabs blindly through the chiller for something vaguely green for a side. 

“Real food,” he says, brandishing the tray of meat and a broccoli head. 

Toast scowls. “But we have real food  _ all the time! _ ”

“That’s the point,” Max says, lip twitching slightly as he smirks down amusedly at the girl. She’s got her arms folded and a very familiar glare on her face - he wonders if she’ll stay still long enough for him to snap a picture of it to send to Furiosa. “You want Play-Doh food?”

“Waffles are real foods!” Cheedo insists, clasping her hands together and staring up at Max imploringly with wide, teary eyes. She even tries for the wobbly lip, but as much as Max  _ wants  _ to give in and let them all have savory waffles for dinner (and then sweet waffles for dessert), he doesn’t think Furiosa’s going to appreciate the fact as much. 

Eventually he shrugs, placing the things down onto the island and leaning against it as he regards them. He folds his arms and tries to appear as disinterested in dinner as he can. “Can ask Ma,” he tells them casually, examining the edges of his nails. “‘f you don’t eat before she comes back -”

“I bet Aunt  _ Val _ would let us,” Toast counters, grinning at the wrinkle it puts in his nose. “Aunt Val’s cool, and Mama Furi  _ never  _ gets mad at her.”

That’s not true; Furiosa gets mad at Valkyrie all the time, he thinks petulantly. It’s just that she can’t  _ stay  _ mad at the woman. 

Max narrows his eyes at the girl and wags a finger at her before turning around to get dinner started. “Go sit down,” he tells them, shooing them from the kitchen because the last time they let Toast sit in for dinner prep, there were knives and stitches and some fair amount of blood and tears and screaming. “Ask Val if she wants to stay for dinner then, you like her so much.”

Cheedo giggles behind her hands before skipping off, Toast following after in loud, tromping steps. 

**Author's Note:**

> My mom was the head of the sex crimes unit. I used to help out as a friendly support system for younger kids and kids my age when it came to getting them to talk. I still keep in touch with a lot of the kids, but yeah. Some of them came from horrible situations, and being there with them offering ridiculous play-time games and braiding their hair (or trying to) helped a lot more than some people think. 
> 
> Anyway.


End file.
